Cram schools are problematic for a number of reasons. One may be the most obvious: that sending seven-to-twelve year-olds to study for hours after they’ve already been at school all day seems, at best, super un-fun and, at worst, a recipe for a disastrous mix of mental health stressors in already anxious students. Another reason to be skeptical about cram schools is that they aren’t cheap, and often therefore contribute to a divide between students whose parents have wealth and students whose parents may not have the resources to spend extra income on private tutoring. This results in a glaring disparity within classrooms between students whose families have money and those who do not. In practice, this means that I am teaching sentence structures like “Who are you?”, “Are you hungry?”, and “What day is today?” to a classroom with some students who do not even know their English name or how to count to 10, along with other students who can have full fledged conversations in English with me about which night market foods are my favorite. This means I try to design lessons that challenge my most advanced students while also supporting my lower-proficiency level students who may become disengaged from the lesson if they cannot comprehend even basic instructions in English.
In addition to the wealth divide (and hence, the disparity in access to educational resources), students within my classroom also come from a wide variety of backgrounds that may influence their ability to succeed.
